Understanding and Evaluating the Benefits of the Internet of Things for Health Care

Roy Campbell

Department of Computer ScienceUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaignrhc@illinois.edu

In this talk, we explore how the ability of the “Internet of Things” to enhance the health care industry can be advanced through system software research.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a well-known computer science concept that envisions a network-connected web of sensing and actuating, uniquely identifiable, embedded computing-like devices. An early example of such devices would be heart-rate monitoring devices that, through the Internet of Things, are reporting instant data about patients. The collected data can be used not only for early detection of a patient’s critical condition, but also for further wide association studies.

Although the concept of the Internet of Things is very promising and easy to deploy in other areas, many questions must be answered before a full spectrum can be deployed in health care. Uncertainties about best architecture practice, availability, dependability, usability, etc., are just a few of those questions.

Although there has been effort in this area, there has been a lack of detailed practical studies. We propose simulation-based studies to explore the Internet of Things in health care. We would first model the health care ecosystem as an IoT environment. Then we would research deployment, pattern of use, and practices for that model. The results would be evaluated and tuned through the simulation platform. Further, the simulation platform could be instrumented, monitored, and actuated with the IoT, allowing both practice and simulation evaluation. That would greatly enhance the efficacy of the study. The outcome could be used widely in the deployment of IoT in other health care environments and could be coupled with private and public cloud and data collection and analysis services. The research would build on more than 15 years of experience investigating middleware infrastructure for active spaces, smart rooms, and telepresence.

Roy Campbell is the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1977. Professor Campbell’s research interests are the problems, engineering, and construction techniques of complex system software. Security, continuous media, and real-time control pose a challenge to operating system designers. Ubiquitous, distributed, and parallel systems require complex resource management and efficient implementations. Object-oriented design aids in organizing software, supports customization, and offers new approaches to building dynamic distributed systems and middleware. Over time, research in system software has become increasingly important, and the construction of complex system software has become a focus for advanced software engineering techniques.

Prof. Campbell’s current research projects include security assessment of SCADA networks, operating system dependability and security, active spaces for ubiquitous computing, and the design of cloud, data-intensive, and distributed operating systems.